Exciting times for Brooklyn’s indie avant-prog combo Fang Island after they earned Pitchfork’s "Best new Music" blessing. The band announced dates supporting The Flaming Lips in July – definitely a fitting opener for the quirky psych rock darlings. Fang Island will also headline their own mini-tour beginning May 15th in Phoenix, leading to a NYC homecoming on May 29th with Dan Deacon to celebrate the 5th anniversary of the Cake Shop. The quintet also plays Chicago’s Green Music Fest in June. Fang Island began, oddly enough, as an art school project while the band members were attending the prodigious Rhode Island School of Design (also the foundation for Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Les Savvy Fav, Six Finger Satellite, Lightning Bolt and some band called the Talking Heads.)

While weirdos of all ages, sexes and races will head to Glasslands to witness some of the noisiest bands on Earth, more "normal" New Yorkers (who actually care about their hearing) will fill up Brooklyn Bowl to be entarteined in some kind of old style way by our wonderful April Smith and the Great Picture. Shall NYC party boys behave like gentlemen for one night – her music calls for it. Mellow folk rockers Motel Motel and emotional but fun loving Shayna Zaid and The Catch will be noteworthy openers.

The Deli’s Fest-ivities continue tonight with a rather noisy bill at Glasslands, where we’ll have two of our beloved Deli Magazine "Cover Bands" performing (Talk Normal and Buke and Gass). The party will start around 8.30 with super fun Miniboone and their upbeat, enthusiastic indie pop.

Unreal and totally unique Buke and Gass (in the picture) will follow. Now, the recent buzz-plosion of band needs a little self-celebratory comment. We put these guys on the cover of our Summer 2009 printed magazine and to our surprise nobody seemed to give a crap. Well, dudes, Buke and Gass just toured with The National, signed to Brasslands, got an interview on Stereogum AND another one on WNYC Radiolab. So as you now are so many people are finally discovering this band you all may as well pick up one of those Deli issues with them on the cover (there will be plenty at the show) and/or check out their online feature here.
BUT, the band you shall not miss tonight is Talk Normal (in the video), another female fronted bloody noisy duo. These girls have picked up where Sonic youth left off – and the not so young Sonics are aware of it as they picked them to open for them at this summer Celebrate Brooklyn Fest in Prospect Park.
To sum it up: wonderfully nasty guitar tones will hit your eardrums tonight, earplugs recommended!

The Deli’s Best of NYC Fest‘s late Friday night show could not not be an electronic, dancey affair. Tonight at Glassland Gallery we’ll have a night party with some very intriguing electronic acts, including: our Winter issue cover band Glass Ghost and their chilled but suspenseful electro-mellow-core (we are SO good at making up genres!); remixers with an indie heart Streetlab (who will be performing with a full lineup at 11.30 and then do their unmissable "live remixing" DJ set late at night): and finally what can be called "The Prince of Bronx" (or TAFKAPOB if you want, as in The Artist Previously Known As Prince of Bronx): this man – namely Gordon Voidwell, in the picture – will make us dance till we drop – can’t wait for the song "Ivy League Circus" to start!

Brooklyn-based duo The Hundred in the Hands hits the road for their first national tour beginning June 3 in San Francisco. The tour coincides with the release of the band’s debut EP, This Desert, on Warp Records, to be followed by the band’s debut LP this fall. To simplify we could say that these guys sound like an electronic, darkest version of Pains Being pure at Heart, with a more "German" (as in "Kraut Rock", industrial, "detached") approach to 80s references like The Smiths, Cocteau Twins and early Echo and the Bunnymen. We can predict that this summer many will fall in love with their music (and singer Eleanor Everdell of course).
P.S. Curiously enough, soon after I mentioned the word "German" I noticed that 4 out of 5 songs the band has posted on Myspace have the word "Dresden" in it – good guess?

We though you may enjoy this new Pains video while waiting for their Siren Festival show on July 17.

To celebrate their Record Release Tour of the East Coast and Canada in support of their debut lp ‘New Home,’ Brooklyn’s La Strada are premiering the first video for standout track "WASH ON BY." Good song, good video, good live show (La Strada impressed us at a Deli party a couple of years ago) – don’t miss their upcoming show at the Bell House on May 29.

The Deli’s Best of NYC Fest finally begins! And it does so with a spectacularly moody bill at Brooklyn Bowl that will sure attract hordes of NYC hipsters… Beach Fossils (#10 in our 2009 year end Best of NYC list for emerging artists) is one of the most loved and blogged lo-fi NYC bands right now – they will headline the bill. Before them, Midnight Masses will lull us with their beautiful songs about redemption, sin and death, and Mon Khmer – one of our favorite emerging local bands – will hypnotize crowds with their groovy, sophisticated atnospheres that build slowly but surely.

The front room at Public Assembly will host 4 NYC bands more or less belonging to the "Alt Rock" genre that figured in our year end Best of NYC list or won on of our 2009 Artist of the Month Polls. The night will begin at 9 with Midnight Spin, the band that won our NYC Fans Poll. The Shake will follow with their youthful rock ‘n’ roll, catching riffs, and singable choruses. Cavalier Rose will bring some Southern twang and dark blues to the evening immediately after them with their strong live performance, while The Click Clack Boom – probably the most popular band on the bill, in the picture – will close the night delivering their epic and inventive tunes

I feel about Elk City exactly the same way I feel about UK’s Broadcast: both bands seem to awaken (and fulfill at once) some kind of repressed need that thirty-somethings like me rarely admit in public: the need of motherly wise advice and comfort. A wise motherly figure, after all, is a great commodity for anybody, in particular if she can sing well and looks pretty (I know, I know, we are getting into freudian-oedipian territory here, but dudes, this is DEEP stuff, and Oedipus’ mother was pretty, otherwise he wouldn’t have married her… by the way, i assume you know he didn’t know who she was).
This being said, I’m married and not interested in anything more than one or two platonic singing mothers, which I think everybody should have. But anyway, this is just to say that Elk City is a band that pretty much anybody can appreciate, and that they are releasing a new album on June 1. Check out the free track under here. – PDG

Definitely a great song – by NYC’s own White Rabbits.

Electro rock outfit Arpline have the ability to carve a very original electronic sound through an interesting use of arpeggiators – that’s probably why they managed to land a show opening for NY electronic goddesses School of Seven Bells on June 10 at The Mercury lounge. But you can catch these guys live earlier than that: they are opening for MILAGRES at the Bell House on the 13th of May and playing NYCTaper 3rd anniversary at Pianos on the 15th. The band’s upcoming debut LP (out this fall) is co-produced by Chris Coady (Beach House, Delorean, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV On The Radio, Grizzly Bear).